Saturday, December 8, 2012

"Common" vs. "Choice" - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher

"Common" vs. "Choice" - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher:


"Common" vs. "Choice"

It's been an interesting couple of days. Yesterday, the Michigan legislature, House and Senate both, passed bills imposing Right to Work on one of labor's flagship states. And this morning, I was guest commentator on a radio broadcast on my local NPR station, Interlochen Public Radio, discussing another trick Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has up his sleeve: making Michigan (already a educational choice-friendly state) a "super-choice" state.
You can access the re-broadcast--via radio or internet--here. And you can find information about the democracy-thwarting Right to Work vote herehere and here--and about 1000 other media outlets. It's the hot ticket in Michigan, all this choosing: choosing whether or not to join a union, choosing whether or not to do four years in high school or take the $5K payout for finishing early, or even choosing which "course" vendor will help your 3rd grader read at grade level, one of the core metrics and models mentioned as desirable features of the Any Time, Any Place, Any Way, Any Pace uber-choice legislation package.
Choice! It's what's for dinner, evidently.
There's a certain irony in all this choosing. Traditional public schools are currently experiencing a rescinding of